The success of Morgan Spurlock’s film Super Size Me has undoubtedly scared McDonald’s executives. Even before the film was released nationwide (but following its success at the Sundance Film Festival), the fast food chain announced it was phasing out Super-Size options by the end of the year, except for special promotions. But McDonald’s newest move to prove that the corporation is “health-conscious” is just laughable.

McDonald’s is in the process of making videos, which feature Ronald McDonald and his McDonald’s friends running around and playing. The videos will be sold at your local video store — unless of course it’s a really local — i.e. non-corporate — store.

I imagine these videos to be similar to, say, Barney or whatever the most hip PBS children’s show is today. Will these shows actually teach kids to run around and be more active? I kind of doubt it. After all, the time that kids spend sitting down watching these videos will be time that they could otherwise use to do active things.

Moreover, one of the most unsettling moments in Super Size Me was when Spurlock went into a classroom and showed students pictures of Ronald McDonald, Jesus, and a few other famous people. As a rule, the kids only knew who Ronald McDonald was.

So these videos will remind kids of who this Ronald McDonald guy is, probably inspiring them to want to take a trip to McDonald’s. And they’ll allow kids to have some quiet time in front of the TV. (Granted, I know that kids rarely sit still, but television shows seem to have an amazing way of mesmerizing them).

Call me crazy, but this doesn’t seem like the brightest marketing strategy for a corporation that is trying to reform its image and make itself appear more health-conscious …

Laura Nathan-Garner

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A man apologizes for turning his back on true love. A woman apologizes for having an affair with a married man. Someone else apologizes for embezzlement. Yet another apologizes for ever being born.

From the sound of it, you might think these were the players in a group therapy session. Or maybe you’d think these were the stories of Jews on Yom Kippur, the Day of Repentance. But you would be mistaken.

These are the voices and stories of people who have left their apologizes on an answering machine to heal themselves. Started by a 20-year-old Vassar student, the apology hotline allows people with guilty consciences to experience some release and get the words out — words that they can’t say in person, words that they can’t say to any other human being when there’s a risk that the other person will speak, write, or call back.

Though some psychiatrists have praised the hotline for giving people who otherwise wouldn’t speak a chance to do so, there are, of course, skeptics. One can’t help but wonder how much closure one really gets by saying something that the person who should hear it never will. By virtue of calling a machine, the repentant’s words are not directed toward the person(s) they’ve hurt. They’re about healing oneself. And though healing oneself may be important — integral even — to moving on and regaining self-confidence, it seems like not saying those words to another human being, or not  writing them down, would preclude any genuine closure. That is, it may provide temporary closure with oneself, but by never confronting the other person, I imagine there would be remnants of repressed guilt potentially forever. For people with depression, that’s only likely to trigger a relapse of the illness.

Even if this isn’t the case, this hotline seems dangerous because it lures callers — people who are potentially suicidal or depressed or whose problems extend far beyond the one incident they’re apologizing for — to call and think, “Well, if I can get up the nerve to call the hotline, I’ll be redeemed for my actions and I won’t really have to confront my fears — i.e., fears that reside in interacting with other human beings.” Others may be suicidal — is it really helpful for them to call a hotline where they speak to a machine, or would it be more beneficial for them to call a hotline where the phone is answered by another person, albeit one the caller doesn’t know? How is the anonymity of the latter any different from the anonymity of the former? In my mind, they’re not all that different. But the person who listens to the apology is more likely to be able to open the caller up, however little, or get them help. The machine can’t do that.

Or can it? I can’t help but wonder about the student who started the hotline, the one who receives all of the messages. Does he listen to them? Apparently.

This poses a couple of problems. First, the fact that he does listen to them deceptively undermines the privacy and solitude of the answering machine. Would you feel more comfortable calling a machine about your failures in life, knowing that someone else was going to be listening to you silently, subconsciously judging you? I don’t think I would …

Second, by providing the false illusion that callers are really just speaking to a machine, what kind of precedent does this set for the way in which we define our relationships to other humans? Suddenly, we don’t have to express our emotions to other human beings. We can just replace them with machines, which serve as our intermediaries.

Third, let’s say the student listens to the messages and a caller says s/he is committing suicide. Given the euthanasia and suicide laws in the United States, does the student then become a conspirator in such a suicide?

This isn’t to degrade the difficulty many people have with apologizing and expressing their true feelings. It’s also not to condemn the innovative student who sought to give sad people a way to cope with their feelings when they’re lonely. But the hotline, it seems, is the easy way out, the quick fix that may not really be much of a fix at all.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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Arts and crafts were always one of my favorite things when I was younger. I’m wondering, though, whether we made a mistake by not making arts and crafts mandatory for people throughout their lives, particularly people who hate each other, say, people in war-torn countries or people with different ideologies.

Though Bosnian Serb and Muslim women viewed each other as enemies not so long ago, hundreds of them have since linked up as business partners and knitting buddies. That is, a Tuzla-based non-governmental organization, known as The Bosnian Handicraft, hires women of diverse ethnicities — “mainly refugees who lost their men and homes during the 1992-95 war,” to use their hands to knit carpets, stockings, socks, and various other garments to sell to buyers abroad.

The Bosnian Handicraft was begun in 1995 to help Muslim women establish their economic independence after more than 7,000 men and boys were massacred in the eastern town of Srebrenca. Economically, the group has experienced quite a bit of success, selling over 3,000 pairs of socks to Robert Redford’s Sundance catalogue and to French fashion house Agnes B. The group is in negotiations with prospective British clients.

What the program’s creators weren’t expecting was just what a cathartic experience knitting could be, but numerous women insist that the program has saved their mental health. And by working alongside other women — many of whom they once saw as the enemy, once blamed for the loss of their loved ones — they’re learning how to not just live and work alongside the enemy but also to start to let go of the pain and hatred that defined their past. In the process, they’re starting to see these women as business partners and fellow knitters and creators, putting aside their differences to achieve a common goal of economic independence.

Reading things like this, it’s difficult not to think, “Yeah, right, as if knitting could save the day.” But I imagine that years and years of pain and suffering in which one loses her loved ones, her sense of home, and even a part of herself, fighting wouldn’t seem worth it anymore. I can imagine that if all one had left was her knitting, that might not seem to be much of a reason to keep struggling to survive. But if one was lucky enough to survive — if one had already suffered that much and made it that far, giving up might not seem like much of an option either, leaving coping as the best possible solution. And if it proves to be cathartic, then the struggle might not seem as pronounced.

But it’s difficult to imagine the tensions disappearing altogether or to imagine that economic incentives could make all of the difference. In other words, perhaps it’s a Bosnian form of detente (cooling for tensions), but it may take generations — even centuries — until the tensions cease to lie just below the surface.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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As Frank Rich so eloquently explains in “It Was the Porn that Made Them Do It” in The New York Times today, we can’t keep blaming pornography and Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl incident for the heinous acts of torture that have befallen numerous Iraqi people at Abu Ghraib. Or rather, we could keep playing this blame game, but that wouldn’t change anything, aside from allowing the blamers to deflect responsibility from individuals and from the military to that amorphous, seemingly omnipresent concept we like to call American culture.

Rich is right, no doubt. But I’m willing to go a step further in his discussion of pornography and question the relevance of culture to what has befallen not just the Iraqis at Abu Ghraib but people all over the world — even in the United States — for centuries.

No sex in your violence

Recently, I interviewed Chrisi Lake, a veteran porn star (the full interview will be published later this summer right here in InTheFray). As Christi revealed when we spoke, there is undoubtedly some misogyny in the pornography industry, and there is undoubtedly some violence. That violence likely both influences and is influenced by its connoissuers and its makers. But Janet Jackson showing a little skin — maybe even a nipple — wasn’t violent; erotic, yes; violent, no.

But even if you disregard Janet Jackson’s alleged influence on our violent culture and just focus on genuine pornography, violent pornography isn’t the norm. It’s not what most people — who make porn and/or consume it are watching — though you wouldn’t know that if you listened to the media or many outsiders who tend depict “the world’s oldest profession” as dangerous and violent in order to deter people from partaking in adult entertainment in one form or fashion. That is, blaming the porn industry and Janet Jackson’s indiscretion for the violence becomes a means to prohibit discussions of sex and sexuality, to keep those issues and images out of the public domain, to “purify” or cleanse the American psyche and maintain order in a time that seems, well, disorderly and chaotic, both inside and beyond U.S. borders.

If only things were that easy …

But they aren’t. Remember the 1950s? The 1960s? Vietnam? Korea? The onset of the Cold War ensured that the late 1940s and 1950s marked the peak of sexual containment inside U.S. borders (though there can be no doubt that many people secretly transgressed the strict gender and sexual norms of the time). Did those norms keep the U.S. military out of Korea? Stop the lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, or the Vietnam War?

You know the answer to that question as well as I do.

Though there is often a relationship between sexual culture and violence — some pornography is violent, rape is violent, crimes of passion are violent — the solution to the torture occuring in Abu Ghraib isn’t to question sexual culture first. The solution, of course, also does not permit us to disregard the relevance of culture altogether.

No -ism like militarism

This is not to say that we should focus on culture above the individual, thereby ignoring individual responsibility altogether. For it is despicable, painful even, to see the images of torture and abuse, to think that any human being could do that to another who, much like him or her, also has a family, desires, a heart, and a right to dignity.

But to say that we can separate the individual from his culture is problematic. After all, the culture in which we live indeed influences the ways in which we think, the ways in which we act. Is our culture the only thing that influences who we become and what we do? No, biology and uprbringing — if the latter can even be distinguished from culture — certainly who we are, who we become, and the ways in which we behave and stylize our identities. But culture — not just mass culture but also the subcultures in which we become immersed, play an enormous role in our belief systems, our personal politics, and our actions.

And for those who are a part of the military industrial complex, military culture — militarism — a way of thinking and understanding, the disciplinary structure, and even the toll taken on one’s personal life to go to, say, militarism is undoubtedly a subculture that desperately seeks to shape grown men and women into a certain mold. Unfortunately, today that mold seems to be one that permits — even emphasizes — dehumanization of the enemy and attempts to redefine some people as unhuman, as lesser, while defining oneself — and one’s nation and military — as potent, noble, and triumphant. And something about that’s got to change because we will probably never cease fighting wars. But we’ve got to discuss the ways in which they’re fought and the culture in which those who fight them are embedded.

There is a way of thinking, a way of relating to others — and a different way of relating to people from one’s own military versus the way one relates to the “opposing” military — that is in desparate need of re-evaluation.

Lessons from a bad blind date

A brief personal anecdote illuminates some of my experience with this mindset here: Last fall, a friend asked me to join her on a blind date with two guys she didn’t really know. I agreed to go only because I couldn’t think of a good reason not to go. And because the situation sounded a little sketchy, I wasn’t too keen on the idea of letting her go alone.

So we met these two guys, whom I discovered my friend met through Friendster, and as it turns out, they were in town for the evening to get away from their “work” at a military training camp about two hours away. We got to discussing what we do, and though I had some inkling of an idea of what they do, I tried to be open-minded. But once we got down to the nitty-gritty of what they do and what it is that they were going to do in Iraq  later that month, I realized I was going to have a tough time playing it cool.

“Well, my main job is to aim at things and drop bombs on them, you know, to destroy the Iraqis,” one of the guys explained. This, incidentally, was the evening after the United States paraded a captured Saddam Hussein around on television. And what did these guys think about this? Would they really have any reason to continue bombing “things” in Iraq now that Saddam had been captured and the United States had come to realize that there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq?

“Well, yeah, I mean, we just take orders — we’ll be bombing things for a while until we’ve cut off their lifelines, you know, make sure they aren’t powerful enough to resist the occupation.”

Despite being the worst so-called date ever, my interaction with these two men that evening made me realize that both the “we’re just doing our job” mentality reigns in the military, enabling individuals like these two to deflect responsibility, to blame their actions on the necessity of warfare and of nation-building and responsibility of one’s own nation against another nation, and to do all of this without ever thinking about the fact that what they were doing was affecting other people who were much like themselves at the end of the day.

It was as if Iraq was this great, wide-open space devoid of life, and it was their job to flatten it out and start all over. And if there were people in Iraq, well, they were those two guys and their buddies; everyone else was a level or two below them on the totem pole.

(Not) always on my mind

There are international laws and agreements, particularly the Geneva Accords, designed to ensure protection of prisoners held in war so that, well, they don’t get tortured, abused, raped, and killed by prison guards. The United States, sadly, has rarely paid these agreements the level of attention and respect necessary to implement them in practice.

But these accords are paper documents with words that obviously cannot alter the minds and actions of those in the military. They can’t stop something that might be analagous to a crime of passion — or crimes of occupation.

Or rather, they can’t alter the mindset of many in the military without reframing the way in which we talk about war. When we fight wars — even when they’re fought in the name of “securing the world against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction” or “overthrowing a tyrant,” there is a peculiar assumption not just that we need to “save” the people inhabiting those countries, but also that we are in some way more human or of a superior type of humanity, that our lives are somehow more valuable, since, “Hey, we’re saving your country for you, aren’t we?!”

And that’s just my understanding as an outsider; I know that it’s much more complicated than that. I know that not everyone in the military is evil. I know that many people join the army so that they can go to school and to support their families, and I respect that. But that’s just one side of the story (even for those individuals). There are many who believe they’re showing some goodwill (like the guys on my bad blind date) even though unconsciously they maintain an aura of superiority or distinguish themselves from the people in the occupied country.

Whatever it is, however you want to explain militarism, it is a culture. It is a way of thinking about one’s relationship to violence and a way of thinking about one’s relationship to other human beings (and at least two different types of beings, mind you — the enemy and oneself), and a way of relating one’s relationships with people with one’s relationship to violence.

I emphasize this rather obvious point because while there are a handful of U.S. military officials in Iraq who will lose their jobs, be demoted, or be punished in some other way for the incidents at Abu Ghraib. Such incidents have been occuring all over the world — at Guantanamo Bay, in brothels on U.S. bases in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, Afghanistan, and many other places, I’m sure. Such incidents of rape and torture are also not unique to this century or this period in American culture. Such incidents have been occuring for much longer. It just so happens that someone finally spoke up and got attention from the media this time (which could be the result of a combination of a number of things). Perhaps they’ve happened in prisons occupied by countries other than the United States as well.

In fact, the most common factor in all of these cases is not Janet Jackson’s nipple. It is, rather, militarism, enemy territory, and the best excuses of all: “Boys will be boys,” and “I was just doing my job (because I was deathly afraid of the consequences of not doing so).”

In other words, this isn’t about a few jaded individuals. It is about an entire military culture, and I hope that “cleaning house” and getting rid of a few bad seeds in the military who got caught this time doesn’t lead us to believe that the military has become more benign, that it has changed the way the military and people who are part of the miliary industrial complex relate to and treat other human beings.

Am I saying it was the military that made them do it? No — those who tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib probably weren’t given direct orders by Donald Rumsfeld to do what they did. But militarism and the painfully strict disciplinary regime that provides the military’s structure and social order just may have influenced and shaped the perpetrators’ understandings of their positions and responsibilities.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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As far as I’m concerned, there are at least three kinds of SPAM email these days. One is the “get a larger penis/larger breasts/you’ve won the lottery” kind of spam sent to everyone with an email address. The second type, somewhat similar to the third, is the mass circulation of a funny joke, funny pictures, etc., among friends, family members, and colleagues. In this day and age when it can sometimes be difficult to consider much in life a laughing matter, this type of email can be a lifesaver. But like the first type, this type of email rarely parades around, pretending to be personal and seeking to warm your heart. The third type, which I am most concerned with, is the “mass forward” — those emails that at times will seem heartfelt but at others will be considered a waste of space and time, quickly becoming victims of the delete button.

I received one of the latter types of SPAM this evening from a distant relative whom I never see. It was one of those “What if your best friend died tomorrow and didn’t know that you cared about him/her? … Forward this to at least ten people immediately or you will be doomed to a life without friends. And make sure you send this back to the person who sent this to you so s/he knows you care” emails.

And, of course, this “personal” email reminding me to care and love the people in my life wasn’t just sent to me. It was sent to everyone in my aunt’s email address book. Sure, for a moment, I thought, “That’s nice.” But then I noticed that she really seemed to have sent it to everyone in her address book.

Does that mean she loves us all equally and wants us to know that she cares? Or is this just an easy way to remind us: “Hey, I’m still alive, why haven’t you been in touch with me? The ball’s in your court now, and I’ll know you don’t care about me if I’m not one of the ten people you send this email back to?” Sure, the latter probably isn’t what she’s thinking (at least I hope not!), but on some level, that’s what the mass email is. It’s an efficient means to reach out to everyone you know at once without offering anything resembling a personal touch or requiring you to take time out of your busy life for the people you care for.

After all, it takes maybe a minute to send (maybe less depending on the speed of your computer). Yes, it might take far more time to send a personal email or pick up the phone and call each of the people in your address book. (Heaven forbid you really put the people in your life first and make an effort to show them that they matter!). Do I really know that you care if I, along with everyone else you have ever received an email from, receives this email? All I really know is that you care enough to put me in your address book (though with my email program, at least, it automatically saves the email addresses from every email I’ve ever received and puts them into my address book — so if I ever hit “reply to all,” I’m sure that some of those spammers offering me insight on how to get bigger breasts or how to lose 85 pounds without ever exercising or dieting would receive that email). Not exactly personal since I’ve never met those folks (at least not to the best of my knowledge).

The mass sentimental email is, in many regards, something akin to the sentimental greeting card. I’m not a fan of buying cards of the sappy genre because I figure it’s always better to say those things myself, to sound more sincere and a little less like someone who is a good shopper for sentimental greeting cards. I’ve made this complaint to friends before, some of whom have reminded me that such cards and forwarded emails provide a means for people who are not good at expressing their feelings to do so. But are they really expressing their own feelings, or are they merely latching onto — even purchasing — someone else’s words to avoid having to confront their own fears and emotions — and in many instances, their own dearth of time or misguided priorities about who and what matters most?

So yes, while the Internet might provide us an easier means to tell everyone we know how much we care, it can’t guarantee that they’ll take such gestures seriously. It might even turn them off, allowing them to think that that’s all the time you’ve got to give to them.

I’m sure you’re thinking, “And this doesn’t sound like a cheesy Hallmark card?!” Feel free to think that. I wrote it all by myself — though I was inspired, I suppose, by the mass sentimental email. I suppose it means that the email served its purpose: It made me think. Just probably not in the positive, uplifting way its author intended.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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Perhaps MTV executives took a hint from Chang Liu’s piece, “Where multiculturalism gets airbrushed,” because yesterday the entertainment magnate announced that it will be launching LOGO, a channel that will market to queers beginning in February 2005.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has come out in full support of what it calls a “groundbreaking” move by MTV and Viacom. According to a press release by the group on Tuesday,

We’re excited and looking forward to hearing more about the programming and marketing strategies for LOGO … This channel has enormous potential — and who better to make the investment than
the network that has brought us ‘The Real World?’ MTV has the two main ingredients necessary for success: A solid programming track record and an unwavering commitment to our stories, our issues and our lives … With this announcement, MTV is reaching out to an underserved audience hungering for quality LGBT programming.

It was, of course, only a matter of time. In the last two years, we’ve already seen the rise of cable channels devoted to blacks and women, as well as television shows such as “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” “Queer as Folk,” and Showtime’s “The L Word,” which have allegedly targeted gay audiences. Given the success of these shows, it only makes sense that MTV would try to exploit this prime market. But I can’t help but wonder. First, is the success of “Queer Eye” due to a predominately queer audience or due to an audience that is still predominately heterosexual, which watches the show because, well, it’s an entertaining reality show? If the show’s success can be explained by the latter, will MTV be able to win over the same audience (unless, of course, LOGO plans to feature the new staple of American culture — reality TV — around the clock)? Moreover, is this marketing scheme really about representing the queer communities for their own sake, or is it merely another means for a media magnate to score more cash? Finally, though LOGO’s website indicates that “Our vision is to always reflect the diversity of the LGBT experience,” will the network’s actions live up to its words when, as Liu suggests, MTV has yet to figure out how to represent multiculturalism without airbrushing away differences?

LOGO’s mission to speak to and represent diversity is, of course, a venerable one. But only time will tell how “groundbreaking” MTV’s actions really are. Stay tuned — but be sure you read between the lines.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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Last Friday, AlterNet published a piece by Columbia Journalism Review Managing Editor Brent Cunningham, who argues that the media, by virtue of its elitist composition (amongst other things), has contributed to the invisibility of the working class in the United States.

As Cunningham argues:

After reading this, I thought, “Well the answer must lie in recruitment. If the problem is one of underrepresentation of an entire class of people, their lives, and problems by the media, then wouldn’t one solution be for journalism programs and various media outlets to recruit more working class people as students and staff writers? Wouldn’t this improve the ways in which their predicaments are narrated by other journalists as ‘someone else’s problem,’ ‘a life to be pittied,’ ‘a chaotic — even dangerous — lifestyle that suburbia should fear coming into contact with?’ If journalists reported with a grassroots flavor, in the truest sense of the word, wouldn’t we be able to bridge the misrepresentations, underrepresenations, and misunderstandings produced, at least in part, by the media — and in turn bridge the class divide, or at least better illuminate the problem?”

It was almost as if Cunningham could see me thinking this, however. A few paragraphs later, he suggested that getting more minorities involved in the media might help alleviate the problem of invisibility. But then he continued on to suggest that having a journalist go into his or her own working class community to report might give his or her subjects the wrong impression. That is, the people in the community might associate his or her profession with elitism and authority. In turn, locals might either treat the journalist with more respect than they would otherwise, undermining the realism and authenticity of the reportage, or they might not trust the journalist and his or her motives, preventing the journalist and his or her subjects from striking up a rapport that would allow the reporting to reflect the lives of the people in question on any given day (rather than on that particular day).

Can the underrepresented speak?

Cunningham isn’t mistaken on this account. His argument, in fact, is one that ethnographers and journalists have long struggled with: How can underrepresented people represent themselves with an authentic voice? No matter how good their intentions are, once journalists and ethnographers get involved, the voice is always likely to be a little less authentic as the interviews, the reporting, the interactions become an event, and the lives of the subjects become something of a spectacle — something out of the ordinary.

I’d love to tell you I have a solution, but I don’t think there’s a perfect solution to this problem. I think the closest solution to perfect we have is talking about it — figuring out who it is that we’re talking about, getting to know the people we’re writing and talking about, empathizing with them, understanding them as folks just like ourselves (despite potential differences in bank account balances), recruiting more underrepresented groups into journalism programs and to work at various media outlets.

Going from “wrong” to “write”

But for the underrepresented to want to partake in careers that rarely speak to them, we need to examine another representational problem first. That is, could the problem be not just with who tells the stories, but with how they tell those stories? What constitutes “news?” Why do we have such narrow structures for writing and defining news?

The vast majority of journalism programs are centered around teaching mass-communication. While, in theory, such programs should be speaking to — but for (and by) the masses — they don’t cater to a sizeable segment of the people in this country (or even in this world). Most of these programs don’t get down to the nitty gritty of how to discuss and write about cultures — particularly those of which the journalist does not consider him- or herself a part. These programs do, however, teach you how to write good lead sentences, where to put periods and commas, and what words to capitalize or italicize. And, of course, they teach students how be sparse of words when writing or speaking.

I realize I will sound like a hypocrite here, seeing as I’m one of those people who can be ridiculously anal about sentence structure and grammar and deleting redundant phrases and paragraphs to keep things short (though I’m sure you wouldn’t know that I try to “cut the fat” based on this article). But keep in mind two things: 1. I’m writing this criticism reflexively. That is, this is a criticism not just of other people, but one that affects all of us, one that affects the ways in which we create distance in our writing. 2. I have never been formally educated as a journalist, though I have edited countless stories for my younger brother, a journalism major at the University of Texas. My experience with journalism education, then, derives largely from our discussions, my frustration with his writing, and his pride in his ability to follow what, to me, seems to be a writing formula designed to make the journalist appear as neutral as possible.

In reality, this objectivity is frequently little more than a name, an excuse to hide (whether consciously or not) from digging deeper, discussing real issues, talking about people, culture, differences, similarities. Basically, all of the things I like to discuss.

While my rant may sound self-absorbed, it’s one small example of a much larger phenomenon in the way in which journalism is typically taught and the way in which I suspect that deters many people — particularly some of the so-called invisible working-class people — from choosing such a career path. That is, because most journalism programs are focused on mass-communication, they stifle individuality, creativity, and critical thought in favor of a formulaic, capitalistic/corporate mentality that wants to be able to spit out stories as quickly as possible.

Sure, this isn’t always the case; there are stories that require multiple writers, interviewers, editors, and subjects; stories or projects that take months, even years, to complete. Some of those are even stories about the working class — “special features,” they call them. But as Cunningham emphasizes, the problem for the invisible working class is that their lives aren’t lived as features or projects. They’re humans who live everyday, and most of those days go unnoticed because on a “normal” day, the media tends to de-emphasize (or ignore) the importance of personal experience and empathy.

Typically, the closest we get is replacing the ‘e’ with an ‘s’ and winding up with sympathy and pity – in other words, a means to problematize other people’s lives and distance ourselves from “those people” and their problems. Typically writing in the third person, journalists become invested with some authority; the opinions they articulate don’t seem to be opinions by virtue of keeping pronouns such as “I” out of the story and shielded from criticism. And when opinions do become apparent in non-commentary pieces, they’re frequently cast as universal opinions. Keeping things short and simple by writing as onlookers (i.e. – outsiders) also becomes a way to circumvent description, feeling, and humanity. Distance is, after all, what creates an aura of objectivity (though scratching the surface tends to suggest otherwise), which in turn creates an aura of authority – a privileging of the subjectivity of the reporter over that of the people s/he’s writing about, or a means of treating the subjects of the story as “foreign,” making it difficult for readers to treat those subjects any differently.

Speak, memory

The solution isn’t to abandon journalism or to abandon writing and communication conventions, but rather to experiment and embrace other types of communication — types that are less formal, less structured, more human, more personal. Two years ago when I worked with students in the Chicago Debate League, a debate league for students in urban public Chicago schools (which were predominately comprised of impoverished minority students), I found that the willingness to de-emphasize certain structures in favor of personal expression and inclusion can go a long way in making students feel empowered and feel as if someone is listening. That is, unlike suburban debate programs, which typically have a wealth of funding to send their students to pricey summer workshops where they can learn from successful college debaters and return home with mountains of research and refined speaking skills, students in the Chicago Debate League often don’t have much in the way of well-researched “evidence,” renowned mentors, or hours after school to prepare for tournaments with their teammates.

Many of these students have to work full-time to help support their families; many have been involved in gangs or been deemed “failures” by their teachers. They have lived life on the margins and grappled with what it means to be invisible and what it means to struggle to fit into academic and social structures that don’t accommodate the lives they live. And then they’ve become involved in the Chicago Debate League, which refuses to force students to assimilate into a predominant structure, allowing them to instead assimilate that structure into their lives, at least partially on their terms.

Because the Chicago Debate League encourages students to draw on their own resources — their community, themselves, a little bit of Web research here and there, and some amazing teachers who are committed to seeing their students succeed, many students have excelled despite the odds. Many have graduated from high school, gotten out of gangs to stay in school, gone on to attend top colleges, debated in college, earned scholarships, or stuck around to mentor debaters in their own community. Some have fallen through the cracks along the way, I’’m sure. But this has been the case for far fewer than you might expect. Because the communication activity is willing to broaden the parameters and relax its structures, a significant number of students who wouldn’t have otherwise excelled or felt empowered or visible have excelled, felt intelligent, gotten excited, and found a voice — one that allows them to represent themselves far better than anyone else can.

This, it seems, may be the best testament yet to our collective ability to bring visibility to those who have historically been invisible. Or rather, this may be a testament to the ability of  the invisible to make themselves visible. And while this may not provide an overnight solution for alleviating the poverty associated with such invisibility, that empowerment and sense of self is most certainly a first step in rediscovering the “can do” attitude that this nation was founded upon. It may also underscore the importance and power of relaxing “formulas” for “good, objective” journalism and communication in favor of more human, subjective communication.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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Ah, election year … A time for breast-baring, contentious films about crucifixion, abstinence promotion, and mind-boggling constitutional amendments to ban the recognition of love in order to preserve the sanctity of a “purer” form of love. And yes, a time to ask who will save your soul during an epic war being fought on two fronts (or more) – the war on terrorism and the war on immorality, the wars on the streets of Baghdad and the culture wars waged by the media, wars fought in the name of Christ and wars fought in the name of mutual respect and genuine tolerance and compassion.

Lately, whenever I turn on the television or read the news, I can’t help but wonder: Where do we go from here? We could simply resign ourselves to accept – or flat out reject – the polarizing logic taking over our culture, accept at face value the answers that The Bible purportedly offers, treat these peculiar cultural trends as a given without seeking “divine” inspiration, no questions asked.

Or we can seek refuge from what filmmaker Brian Dannelly aptly terms “very George Bushian” times. Fleeing to Canada is, of course, one option. But given that most of us have families, jobs, and lives that we can’t easily leave behind, skipping the country is not always a viable option. I thought I had found a simpler – albeit much less permanent – solution: Watching cheesy, seemingly mindless films about high school life. I saw Tina Fey’s film Mean Girls, for instance, not because I wanted to have to think or see a potential Oscar nominee. Nope, from the trailer, I knew the plot was far from anything special and that Lindsay Lohan wouldn’t be nominated for best actress. But I knew it would make me laugh, which is far more than I can say for almost anything I see in the media — or even on the street — these days. I’m also willing to (try to) sit through mindless high school flicks in hopes of being reminded of simpler times, times when deciding who to sit with at lunch or who to ask to prom was considered a life-altering choice, times occasionally characterized by a level of pettiness and intolerance that even our nation’s leaders have yet to sink to.

But as I was reminded by Brian Dannelly’s film Saved! – which, based on the trailer, appears to be another cheesy teenage flick with a religious twist – narratives about high school can be a poignant metaphor for an increasingly asphyxiating political culture.

By telling the story of “good girl” Mary (Jena Malone), a student at American Eagle Christian High School who becomes pregnant when she sleeps with her boyfriend, Dean (Chad Faust), in a desperate attempt to “save” him from becoming – er, being – queer, Dannelly puts forth timely questions about the existence of queerness in Christian (and human) culture, abstinence, and the contradictions and dangers of religious fundamentalism. And through the character of Hillary Faye (Mandy Moore), Mary’s former best friend who is on a mission to save Dean for his “sin” of being gay and Mary for her “sins” of having premarital sex, having a gay boyfriend, getting pregnant, and falling for the minister’s son Patrick (Patrick Fugit), Dannelly questions why a materialistic holier-than-thou aura working in the name of Christ to “save” so-called sinners gets conflated with a “good, pure” Christian soul. Add in Hillary Faye’s attempt to “save” – and convert – Cassandra (Eva Amurri), a rebellious Jewish student who dates Roland, Hillary Faye’s brother (Macauley Culkin), who – thanks to his wheelchair – Hillary Faye considers both a liability to her lifestyle and a cause for her to earn “Jesus points.” Put all the pieces together, and you’ve got a story that the Bush administration should be all too familiar with.

Coming on the heels of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and election year politics that have inspired unprecedented cultural polarization, the timing of the release of Saved! is impeccable. One can only hope that moviegoers don’t dismiss the film as just another high school flick or as anti-Christian. But the latter is practically assured. From the beginning Saved! has been mired in controversy. Citing their refusal to be associated with an “anti-Christian” message, a Christian rock band and several production sites with evangelical Christian ties backed out of agreements to work with the Universal Artists and the rest of the Saved! team at the last minute.

But a closer reading reveals that Saved! doesn’t promote intolerance. Rather, by refusing to embrace the unquestioning devotion and silence of religious fundamentalism, Saved! encourages dialogue regarding the contradictions of religious fundamentalism and what it means to be human. Though “believers” may choose to sit this dialogue — and this film — out, that would be a grave mistake. At a time in our history when religious films like The Passion of the Christ and attempts to outlaw gay marriage (at least patially for religious reasons) have been so influential in dividing the United States, both skeptics and believers have a vested interest in discussing the ways in which the politics of religion impacts our lives — even in films that we consider ourselves too old to relate to.

Laura Nathan-Garner

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:

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Anyone who has ever applied to graduate school, or found an apartment, a car, a job, a good article (ahem), or even his or her soul mate online knows the Internet is something we can no longer live without. And single mothers, many of whom can barely support themselves and their children, are discovering that the Internet just may offer them opportunities that allow them to survive and provide a makeshift family support network for their children.

Co-Abode.com, the latest in online “matchmaking services,” is helping single mothers meet their match — other single mothers. That is, through the site, single mothers can find other single mothers who want to share their homes, reduce their expenses, and alleviate some of the burdens of raising children without a second parent.

Sure, this matchmaking system is fraught with many of the same risks and uncertainties associated with meeting a prospective significant other or friend online. In fact, the stakes are even higher since there are children, homes, and responsibilities (even some division of labor) involved. But if you’re willing to look past that, to look past the fact that the Internet, for better or for worse, has become one of our primary means for connecting with other people in this day and age, it’s a pretty good idea as it gives single mothers and their children a chance to defray some of the burdens of their lifestyle and, significantly, an easy way to network with other women who may be experiencing similar burdens. And the ability to find someone to talk to, someone to confide in, someone to learn from just might be one of the most important steps in empowering these women — and their children, many of whom are “latch-key kids” — and enabling them to secure a sense of belonging as they forge their own new little communities and family units.

One, of course, can’t help but wonder what the right thinks about this — I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before comments are made about how Co-Abode.com promotes lesbiansim because — gasp — it encourages two women to live together and about how it undermines what President Bush terms “that sacred institution between a man and a woman.” But if that’s what critics end up saying, one can only hope that they recognize that Co-Abode.com isn’t the cause of the dissolution of traditional heterosexual coupling. It’s a solution, a means to ensure that children whom might otherwise be raised by just one parent have more stable home lives and have other adults who care for them and to look out for them. Yes, they’re other women. But perhaps that just begs the question of why it is that the right believes that the institution of heterosexual marriage is so fundamental to the definition of family.

The shape of families is changing in the U.S. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a change for the worse. It just has to be a change that adapts to changing times. And for now, that seems to be exactly what Co-Abode.com is trying to do.

Laura Nathan-Garner

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:

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We live in a time when every image seems to be political. I’m not just talking about images of torture emanating from Abu Ghraib or Janet Jackson’s breast from her half-time performance at the Super Bowl either. No, these days, simply going to the movies is a political act, a statement about whether you’re “with [Bush] or with the [Democratic] terrorists.”

Act one: The Passion of the Christ

Mel Gibson’s highly controversial — and highly politicized — film The Passion of the Christ kicked off a year of moviegoing that could be construed as anything but non-partisan. In an election year where the sitting president has made no secret of the relevance of his Christian faith to his political project, Gibson’s film seemed to offer what a friend of mine called “free advertising” for the Bush/Cheney 2004 ticket. As film critic Jay Bliznick noted, Mel Gibson’s film is “for Christian followers who haven’t really read their scripture … those who have been preached to and forced to memorize verse out of context.” Needless to say, this cultural rebirth seemed to feed right into the Bush team’s plans to secure the president’s base and ensure that the estimated four million evangelical Christians who weren’t inspired enough to vote in 2000 don’t stay home again this November. By reminding evangelical Christians that Jesus died for their sins and that they must lead “moral” Christian lives to be saved, The Passion encouraged viewers to distance themselves from the immoral behaviors of Janet Jackson and all those gays and lesbians who had the nerve to demand the right to get married in San Francisco this past February. After all, says Richard Goldstein of The Village Voice, “Religious beliefs and biblical teachings are the most common reason people give for opposing same-sex marriage.” So by claiming the war on immorality as its territory, the GOP got to cast the Democratic alternative as the harbinger of immorality, obscenity, and dissolution of what Bush termed the “sacred institution between a man and a woman.”

I don’t recall the day the media stopped covering The Passion so religiously, though I’ll admit that I thought that day might never come. All I know is that fateful day came sometime after Easter (when The Passion did wonders for the box offices) and sometime shortly before that fateful day when we learned about the torture occuring in Iraq.

Act two: “The Passion of the Election”

Enter the countdown to the election and the films that are as political as they come — with or without a spin. Filmmakers and artists have long been some of the more liberal elements of their respective societies. It’s no coincidence that writers and artists were subjected to many a McCarthy hearing during the 1950s and purged from the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Writers and artists, after all, are often the ones who are the most willing to openly criticize, though there are always some who say that their work is simply art and thus apolitical. But the filmmakers who have made the political films of 2004 don’t hide their agenda. They don’t make any pretenses about being apolitical. Rather, they seek to reject the passivity that has overcome the American electorate and explicitly (or implicitly) question the Bush administration’s failure to hold itself accountable to the interests of the American people.

It’s no coincidence that most of these films are the product of the independent film industry. This may be partially because big corporate film companies such as Miramax don’t think political films can sell given the political apathy of so many Americans. And, of course, as Michael Moore’s run-in with Disney/Miramax over his contentious film Fahrenheit 911 has taught us, even movie corporations don’t want to anger the hand that feeds them in D.C.

Consider Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential (based on the book by James Moore and Wayne Slater). Completed just months before the election, and it’s no coincidence that the producers of Bush’s Brain are struggling to find a distributor. As Slater revealed in a panel discussion concerning the making of the film at the South-by-Southwest (SXSW) film festival in Austin, Texas, this past March, the fact that the film exposed the whisper campaigns and political manipulation of Bush and his right-hand man, Karl Rove, caused many potential interview subjects to back out of scheduled interviews for the film for fear of losing their jobs. Similarly, many film distribution companies have been reticent to pick up the film — at least before the election — since they’ve seen the damage the Rove can do to those who interfere with his political schemes or challenge his authority.

Why did the filmmakers make this film? As Elizabeth Reeder, one of the film’s producers, suggested, the goal of film is to demonstrate that “Rove is out of control and is playing a dangerous game that is destroying democracy.” Do Reeder and her colleagues want to get their film distributed before the election? Absolutely. As Reeder, Slater, and Moore emphasized, Bush’s Brain “makes people think and brings to light stuff we normally don’t hear about because of the White House’s tight ship.”

Die-hard Republicans might dismiss the film — and the book — as propaganda, but the producers insist: “We made a valiant effort to show all sides, and if [certain] perspectives (including Rove’s own) aren’t present, that’s the fault of those people and of Karl” (who threatened prospective interviewees for the film). And while many of the people whom the filmmakers were unable to interview were interviewed in the book, the reason for their presence in the latter and absence from the former can be attributed to the fact that Rove and Bush had initially written off the book, thinking it wouldn’t be very successful. By the time the film project came around, they’d learned better — and feared the power of the silver screen. “Unfortunately,” noted Slater, “not participating in [the film] becomes a way to dismiss it as liberal propaganda.”

As one person who was fortunate to see the film at SXSW and the strong reaction it inspired (what one woman I met termed ”rock concert meets political rally”), it’s not at all surprising that the Bush administration might not want people to see the film. Some people who traditionally vote Republican walked out of the theater after seeking the film in shock, questioning whether they could really justify voting for Team Bush/Rove for another four years. But there were only 1200 people in that theater — enough to decide the election in Florida, but certainly not enough to change the outcome in the Republican stranglehold that is Texas.

Bush’s Brain hasn’t received all of the press that Fahrenheit 911 has, however. That’s likely because, to the best of my knowledge, no major distributor has even tentatively struck a deal with the producers. If one had done so, the story would most certainly be making headlines. But the attention given to Michael Moore’s film is a good indicator of the fate Bush’s Brain might have (minus the attention-grabbing that Michael Moore typically brings with him).

When I was watching some news show on TV last week, the commentators were debating about whether Fahrenheit 911 should be distributed at all — by Disney or anyone else. There were several commentators — not all of whom are Bush fans — who suggested Moore simply didn’t have the right to make such a film and that it wasn’t in the best interest of filmgoers to be inundated with stories of “conspiracy” regarding 9/11. But that was a cop-out. Do these people seriously think that moviegoers just take everything they see at face-value? Are we not intelligent enough to form our own opinions — not just about the cinematography, the acting, the directing, but about what we’re told and how we’re told it? More significantly, if we are going to vote, if democracy is going to be representative and represent a wide array of opinions, then shouldn’t films like these be distributed so that people can make more informed choices, so that a wider array of perspectives can be represented? That doesn’t mean people have to go see such movies. If moviegoers and voters believe they’ve already made up their minds, if they find movies of a particular political persuasion offensive, then they can choose not to see them. But by the same account, shouldn’t the undecided, those who want to see a good movie, and those who are interested in seeing films that are consistent with their own views get to choose to see those movies?

All of this is not to say that the media hype over Fahrenheit 911, like that over The Passion of the Christ, is uncalled for. In many ways, such debates can be productive; they can promote discussion not just of the limits to freedom of speech and expression at a time when civil liberties are being curbed but also about the qualifications of our leaders and their political agendas (overt and covert). But, ironically, while The Passion may have been political as a result of its context — the Bush administration’s religio-political agenda and the election year timing — no one questioned whether Gibson had the right to make his film and the right to distrubute it. Sure, there was outrage about his characterization of the Jews and the violence that saturated the film. But no one seemed to question his right to make the film. Why is it that when the content of a film is explicitly political (as is the case with Bush’s Brain and Fahrenheit 911), we start to question whether filmmakers have the right to criticize our leaders? Perhaps it has something to do with Gibson’s reknown as a filmmaker compared to the relatively smaller political and film clout of the independent filmmakers who made the films about Bush’s agenda. But that cannot possibly suffice as the explanation. The context/content distinction must mean something. Whatever it is, my fear is that by boiling these debates over films with overtly political content down to “this filmmaker has/does not have the right to have this film” distributed, the more important debates don’t get had, undermining the political and creative potential of such films and their filmmakers. And in the process, they just might undermine the creative potential of democracy that Hollywood tends to pride itself on.

Laura Nathan-Garner

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:

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